Since the initial release of ChatGPT at the end of 2022, the landscape has changed.
I mean, I asked a primary care physician for a nutrition pamphlet and he told me I was better off asking ChatGPT. 😵💫🙃
Resumes now have to:
give ATS keyword filtering enough “confidence”
get passed AI detection software
and emulate human tone
while still being received as ‘professional’
There’s a slippery slope to be acknowledged in what we outsource to machines.
I remember a call to action (CTA) from whoever’s Facebook feed:
“Boycott self-checkouts! Cashiers who depend on their hours for income are suffering from cutbacks.“
Okay, but nobody appreciates earning minimum wage standing at a cash register interfacing with every customer at a surface level with the minimum pass for conversation:
“Hi, how are you doing, did you find everything okay?”
The polite person answers, “yes, thank you, I’m doing good, how are you?” Anything beyond that exchange is unnecessary inconvenience or social flexing.
There are some humans who appreciate this as it helps to satisfy their social health requirements and they would be disgruntled at the “invasion” of self-checkout as the predominant closer to the shopping experience, and in my opinion, this is selfish.
Denying progress for the sake of clinging to the status quo… among other things, is selfish.
Instead of arbitrary pushback on every advancement, it is our responsibility to develop maturity.
Without preaching like I have any authority on maturity, let’s discuss reality.
COVID-19 set the precedent for an inflation which has not continued to justify itself in 2026. Yes, there are tariffs obscuring the economics; yes, global trade is hell right now.
We have huge problems with the amount of dependence we have on other countries’ resources.
If not, we are paying what we paid because we set the expectation that we would pay for it.
‘Supply and Demand’ is still taught in public schools, but this doesn’t represent reality.
In January 2021, some hedge funds against GameStop got shafted. 2 things happened:
People with a lot of money expected to accrue a lot more money, and didn’t.
People, perhaps with less starting money, with many different educations and backgrounds stumbled into sums of money that had the potential to boost their class thanks to the chaos of Wall Street.
Nobody says this out loud, but people with lots of money who count on their bets as “sure things” are not good sports when they lose.
And if you think, “why does that matter, they can’t do anything about it.”
😂😂😂
If you don’t understand how much our institutions are built to cater to the rich… public school did you dirty.
(because of course it did)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Substack
Let this be a “bite the hand that feeds” demonstration. Just to set the tone.
https://sacra.com/research/substack-at-45m-year/
Let’s just focus on the 94-employee representation they had in 2022.
$19,000,000/94 ≈ $202,000
And that’s if it’s distributed evenly (and of course it’s not, and of course it gets re-invested back into the product(and of course that product is working on its own advertising product(I’m so tired of the commercialist regime (this is a war)))).
It’s not “publicly traded”, but potential investors still buy or sell shares through secondary marketplaces for private securities, such as Hiive, Forge Global, EquityZen, or Nasdaq Private Market. The company was valued at roughly $1.1 billion following a $100 million Series C round in July 2025.
They’re still playing the game, just at a level more inaccessible than “the common man’s stock markets” … and they have to keep looking like a great investment.
This regime’s status quo:
-Ad revenue
No other business model matches its “hustle”…
and it’s nauseating.
This is an unstoppable force until people start opting-out.
… alternatives look a little like this:
https://youtu.be/rrKSy5C3Two?si=WGL1wKxvsG5Xoyjb
Migration becomes the necessary inconvenience (read: evil, lol) to escape inhospitable conditions.
With inequality skewed across the board, there’s major challenge in acting in solidarity and migrating together.
We operate with a lack of foresight about what we’re trading away for convenience and gratification now.
We operate without base levels of trust across any node, sector, and junction of civilization.
We trap ourselves in the idiom, “better the devil that we know, and not the devil that we don’t.” This is justified. What safeguards do we have in place that migrating from one YouTube to the next won’t render the same conditions that required us to move in the first place? Migration isn’t free. Even digital upheaval creates a cognitive tax.
As a species, at least, from my perspective, in my country, we have been onslaught with requirements for adaptability like has never been seen before. And with so much pressure and survival anxiety, we don’t have much room to breathe to stop and ask: “what are we adapting for?”
I was in 7th grade when my history teacher instructed us to bring a floppy disk to save our PowerPoint presentations. The next year, we were using USB. The save icon hasn’t even been forced to adapt to times-changed. 💾
it’s basically a double standard. 😂
Back to “trust” because something else occurred to me. Without “base levels of trust”, we actually outsource it to branding.
You can make $1+ million by starting a company, establishing a recognizable logo, accruing a verifiable customer base, and selling off your name to the highest bidder who stands to gain, not just from devouring competition, but piggybacking off of “homegrown” or “black-owned” vibes that vanish overnight, but no one doubletakes to notice.
The value you actually created: 0.
You achieved nothing. You accomplished nothing. You served no purpose but to churn for the existing regime. Thank you for your service 🫡
Since the Industrial Revolution, “having money” has been made synonymous with stability, safety, and security which are human needs. “At what cost?” is a question that doesn’t often make it into circulation.
I guess I’m running out of steam (sorry for the meta-commentary) and I’m going to close out here before I think myself to death about polishing this.
I kindly leave you with this think-bite:
If humanity was tasked to harmonize community with technology, what kind of institutions and constructs, cultures or efficiencies would emerge?
Thanks for your view.
I don’t have Stripe payments turned on here, and I’m considering setting up Ko-fi more than considering gating content, but I haven’t set any decisions into stone yet.
Please take care of yourself. The best is yet to come. 🌹